Late in the night, I stopped merely looking at the pen and decided to use it. I began writing all the questions that had been building up inside me on the walls of the room. Hund- reds of questions and zero answers turned the space into either a madman's cell-or a genius's. It didn't matter on which side of the line my questions fell. Whether they called me a genius or a lunatic, I was still me. Their definitions would change nothing.

As the first light of day slipped through the window, the door opened and the doctor walked in. He stared at me, then at the walls, astonished. I slowly rose from where I was sitting.

"Doctor," I said, "maybe the only thing you should have done all along was give me a pen."

"But you're talking," he replied.

I had always been talking-it was just that they hadn't been listening. If your ears are deaf, that's not my fault. There was only one person who had truly heard me, and that person was the owner of this pen. Whatever you do, get me to them. Run whatever tests you want. If you want a normal person, don't worry-I can be normal to an abnormal degree. In fact, I can be so normal that I disappear completely among the rest of the normals. And I think that's exactly what you want.